Volodymyr Manzhos (WAONE)

About

Volodymyr Manzhos, known as WAONE, is a Ukrainian contemporary artist born near Kyiv in the early 1980s. Growing up in a home filled with art books, Orthodox icons, and Soviet-era illustrations collected by his father, he developed an early passion for art around age 4 or 5. Starting in 1999 with graffiti tagging as part of the Ingenious Kids crew in Kyiv, he transitioned to large-scale murals by 2003 in collaboration with artist Aec, forming the duo Interesni Kazki ('Interesting Fairy Tales') in 2005. Their surreal, fairy-tale-inspired murals, characterized by intricate details, smooth gradients, and fantastical narratives, appeared worldwide from Mexico to Australia over the next decade.[1][3][4]

Neo-surrealist contemporary muralism with non-linear narratives exploring ecological apocalypse, duality of life, cosmology, and divine themes